Is There A Better Time Of Year To Buy An iPhone? Here's What You Should Know
It's the time of year when a new iPhone gets unveiled, which means that there's a lot of excitement in the air for America's leading smartphone line. Everyone's looking forward to hearing about the new features, but it's also an important event for those not looking to get the latest and greatest, because of its impact on the rest of the iPhone market.
Generally speaking, when it comes to tech products, like Apple's own MacBooks as well as other laptops, there are times of the year when you're more likely to get good deals. Apple, with its rigid iPhone release schedule, makes this a bit trickier when it comes to the flagship handset, but that doesn't mean that all hope is lost. So if you're looking to buy an iPhone — maybe not the new one, but an iPhone nonetheless — here's what you should know before you spend your money, so you can at least try to spend less of it.
It all centers around September
Being that Apple has pretty strict pricing controls, you shouldn't expect any kind of significant sales on the newest iPhones in the first few months after its release, which is usually in September for the flagship and March for the iPhone SE. Though there will almost certainly be carrier promotions for the newest iPhones, they're generally for increased trade-in value and/or conditional bill credits. This won't help you if you want to buy the phone outright at a discount. So if we begin with those caveats, when can you find significant iPhone discounts?
If you're looking at getting the previous model year's phone, then the price of that model should drop right after the announcement of the newest one. This also lays the groundwork for the increased likelihood of additional discounts during major holiday sale events and their equivalents, like Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Cyber Monday, Memorial Day, Labor Day, and Amazon's Prime Day.
This means that for whatever the current iPhone is at a given moment, the best time to buy is roughly winter through spring, with Memorial Day being the best-positioned holiday relative to Apple's release cycle. Though you may see other sales for Prime Day and Labor Day, unless the discount is overwhelming to the point of being more than what Apple usually drops prices by year over year, you should just wait out the summer until the new model comes out.